Every message you send with Postscript contains a character count. We use character counts to ensure the successful delivery of a message via carriers and also to determine costs for both usage billing and legacy credit billing. It's important to note that:
- Character counts directly impact the cost of your campaign and automation sends.
- Using emojis and/or special characters can decrease the number of available characters for a message.
- Emojis and special characters take up more space behind the scenes of a text message and can affect how a carrier sends the message.
In this article, we define specific characters, discuss the impact to character count, and provide some additional resources for you to better understand your billing.
Basic Character Definitions
Let's review some definitions that will help you understand the concepts in this article.
- Characters. Each symbol, letter, and number in a text has a specific character count. In most cases, the character count is one.
- Credits. At Postscript, each message costs a certain amount of credits to send. The number of characters in a message will affect how many credits a message costs.
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GSM7 Characters. Basic letters, numbers, and symbols in a text. Spaces are also considered a character.
- Example: Take 10% off of our heels today only! equals 37 characters. Each character in this message counts as one character.
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GSM7 Extensive Characters. These characters require an "escape character" within the text which means these characters count as two characters in a message.
- The following characters are considered GSM7 Extension characters: | ^ { } [ ] ~ \ €
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Emojis or Unicode. Standard emojis count as two characters when writing a message. Including an emoji will make all GSM7 Extension Characters count as one character, not two.
- Example: Take 10% off of our ~ best-selling ~ heels today only! 😁 equals 57 characters. Each character, including both ~ characters, would count as one character while the emoji would count as two characters.
- Single SMS messages. These basic messages contain only text. A standard SMS message has 160 available characters, but an SMS message with an emoji only has 70 available characters.
- Multi-part SMS messages. These messages contain only text and exceed the 160 character count. Each individual message within a multi-part SMS message has a 153 character limit. A multi-part SMS message with an emoji has 67 available characters. These messages are strung together and appear as a single message to the end user.
- MMS. These messages include an image or a GIF and cost 3 credits to send. The above character counts still apply; however, you have 1,600 available characters in your message.
- UCS-2. These are special characters such as 'okinas and macrons. When UCS-2 characters are included in your messages, they account for more than one character resulting in your message body being limited to 67 characters.
How GSM7 & GSM7 Extensive Characters Impact Character Count
GSM7 characters count as one character each and GSM7 Extensive Characters count as two characters each.
| Message Type | Characters | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Single SMS message | Up to 160 characters | The cost of 1 SMS (e.g. $0.015/SMS)* based on your selected plan, or 1 credit. See your selected plan's cost per SMS here. |
| Multi-part SMS message | Up to 153 characters |
Multi-part messages allow for up to 153 characters and will cost 1 SMS based on your brand's selected plan, or 1 credit. See your selected plan's cost per SMS here. |
*This price doesn't reflect carrier fees. To see your cost per message including carrier fees, please view your account's billing tab.
How Emojis & GSM7 Extensive Characters Impact Character Count
When you use an emoji in a message without an image or GIF, the character count drops to 70 available characters per credit.
Remember here that each emoji you include in a message counts as two characters each, while each GSM7 Extensive Character counts as one credit each.
| Message Type | Characters | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Single SMS message | Up to 70 characters (including an emoji) | The cost of 1 SMS (e.g. $0.015/SMS)* based on your selected plan, or 1 credit. See your selected plan's cost per SMS here. |
| Multi-part SMS message | Up to 67 characters (including an emoji) | Multi-part messages allow for up to 67 characters, including an emoji, and will cost 1 SMS based on your brand's selected plan, or 1 credit. See your selected plan's cost per SMS here. |
*This price doesn't reflect carrier fees. To see your cost per message including carrier fees, please view your account's billing tab.
How UCS-2 Characters Impact Character Count
When we send text messages, the characters in the message are encoded so that they can be transmitted over the network to the recipient's phone. There are different ways of encoding characters. One of the main standards is UCS-2. GSM-7 is a standard that is used to encode most of the commonly used letters and symbols in many languages. However, it doesn't include all of the characters that we might want to use, such as ʻokinas and macrons.
When messages include special characters like ʻokinas and macrons they need to be encoded using UCS-2, which means that they account for more than one character in a message. This results in an increased character count when using these characters in your messages. If Postscript detects any non-GSM-7 characters in the message body, we will fall back to UCS-2 encoding. This limits the message body to 67 characters, which means that multi-segment messages will be created if your message body exceeds 67 characters.
How MMS Impacts Character Count
An MMS message includes an image or a GIF, which allows up to 1,600 characters for 3 credits.
Each emoji you include in a message counts as two characters each, while each GSM7 and GSM7 Extensive Character count as one credit each. However, since you are sending an MMS, you have up to 1,600 characters available in your message.
| Characters | Credits |
|---|---|
| 1- 1,600 characters | 1 MMS based on your brand's selected plan, or 3 credits. See your selected plan's cost per SMS here. |
Before You Go
Before you go, check out some key information about character counts:
- SMS messages are divided into single SMS messages (160 characters / 70 characters & emojis) and multi-part SMS messages (153 characters / 67 characters & emojis). Messages that exceed the 160 character count qualify as multi-part SMS messages and include metadata. Our service provider uses the memory in the character count difference to capture that metadata to pass along to carriers. Passing along the metadata this way ultimately ensures the individual message parts are delivered together and in the proper sequence.
- When inserting tags in a message, such as {first_name}, the tag will be replaced with the subscriber's first name when the message sends. This can make it difficult to predict the exact number of characters each message will use with pinpoint accuracy though Postscript does include a credit estimator on each draft message.
Additional Resources
- Need to brush up on how international sending impacts your spend? Learn more about the impact sending international has on your bill.
- Interested in learning more about your Postscript Bill and Charges? We've got you covered with this guide.
- Curious to learn more about what your Postscript Plan includes? Check out this article for an overview of what's included with each Postscript plan.
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Have questions? Please feel free to reach out to our wonderful Support team at support@postscript.io or via live chat. You can also submit a support request here!
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